Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4
Select Internet Options. The Internet Options dialog box
opens, with the General tab displayed.
5
In the Home Page section of the General tab, click the
Use Current button. The box above it should now contain
the URL of the current site.
6
Click the Apply button. The next time you launch the
browser, the home page you selected will be displayed.
Accessing a Website
After you launch your web browser, you simply type a URL in the
address field to visit the site associated with that URL. DNS will resolve
the URL to an IP address, and you will be presented with the page you
specified. You can then click on hyperlinks on that page to see additional
pages and information, or to visit other sites.
Identifying Secure Sites
When you browse a website that uses the HTTP protocol, everything is transmitted and received in clear text. That
means someone using a packet sniffer (discussed in
Chapter 11
) could easily intercept the information. This is
okay for normal browsing, but not when carrying out financial transactions that involve entering credit card informa-
tion or other personal details.
To make it more difficult for criminals to acquire your information, a secure encrypted connection is required when
you are sending sensitive data. HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) provides an encrypted connection
between the web browser and the web server. With HTTPS, the two endpoints exchange an encryption key, enabling
the encryption of all future communication between them. When a connection uses HTTPS, the URL starts with
https://
rather than
http://
, as shown. In addition, a padlock appears in the browser's address bar, and in
some browsers the address bar may appear with a green background. A secure connection happens automatically
when you log into a secure site; you do not have to do anything special to initiate it.
